I talk to business schools and Universities in India on a daily basis on subjects ranging from “candidate recruitment” to “zero based marketing designs” and sometimes regarding benchmarking their practices against the best in the domain.
What I personally believe is that none of these business schools get any indicator of improvements that they need to make from the collection of ratings and rankings are are published each year. Most of what is done is based on providing “candidates” an idea of benchmarks and listing of programs as per some regular factors.
I sincerely believe that each candidate should do his or her own review of business schools while researching for them personally or through peers or a community like PaGaLGuY.com.
So the question is – what if I had to review institutes, and had the access to their systems directly?
My idea of an institute review is on the lines of a “movie” review, wherein critical factors are taken into consideration and then rated separately, while a final verdict is reached after using the individual ratings to generate a final score through my customized algorithm.
According to me, there are 6 Critical factors to consider:
1. Learning systems: includes pedagogy, delivery, assessments, projects, development systems, etc.
2. Admission team: because without a potent team in place, b-schools don’t stand a chance to engage with the right kind of candidates
3. Technology Absorption: includes usage of technology across all systems, and way they conduct digital engagement and reputation management
4. Infrastructure: the usual stuff – but I would also want to understand “ongoing” or “continuous” investments in infra
5. Employability: employer connect and where are current students getting placed, ROI, etc.
6. Ease of Access: relates to whether candidates from across India have quick and open access to the institute’s resources/systems, and how transparent is the institution across all its systems.
I call this the TALIEE system.
Providing these factors with scores/stars:
I will then provide each of these factors a score/stars between 0 to 5 depending upon my experience and analysis of each of the factors. Objectivity is crucial here.
Once I have completed the scoring/allocating “stars” process, I can then use my personal algorithm (with weightages) and provide a final “Verdict” for my friends/peers/community who can use this feedback as a support while engaging with the business schools.
A point to note here is that I cannot publish a full fledged “list” of ratings using this method. That would defeat the purpose of providing a customized and individual report for a specific program. An “Institute Report” would be relevant only if it is designed as an individual feedback rather than a comparative list.
A first-person account and review is always better than a collated list.